Dowries were banned in India in 1961, and Dr Manjula wants to see similar legislation changes in Victoria.

Reuters: Amit Dave, file photo

Former Victorian premier Ted Baillieu has called for the state to introduce a ban on marriage dowries because he says they can lead to domestic violence.

A dowry can be gifts, money or property that a wife or wife's family gives to her husband when they marry.

Mr Baillieu said some young women who arrive in Australia in arranged marriages face pressure to provide more to their husbands, which can trigger abuse.

"(They) may find themselves subjected to demands for more dowry, demands for continuing dowry, and that leads in some instances to family breakdown, to intimidation, to family violence," Mr Baillieu said.

"There is an aspect of dowry which leads to this sort of problem. The coercive and continuing demands for further dowry have been a significant problem in some areas of our community and we need to do something about it."

Mr Baillieu has tabled a petition in Parliament that calls for the definition of economic abuse within the Family Violence Protection Act to include coercive demands for dowry.

The families of these women give dowries out of fear that the husband may not give the woman the respect she deserves after the marriage.

Dr Manjula O'Connor, psychiatrist

"It's a historic and cultural tradition but in India they have seen fit to ban dowry, but I don't think that's enforced," he told 774 ABC Melbourne.

Psychiatrist Dr Manjula O'Connor works with victims of domestic abuse in the Melbourne Indian community and said she has seen about 150 women in the past 12 months who have suffered from problems arising from dowries.

"I see these women with clinical cases of domestic violence and 75 per cent of them have some kind of dowry associated with them," Dr O'Connor said.

"The families of these women give dowries out of fear that the husband may not give the woman the respect she deserves after the marriage."

Dowries not limited to one community

However, Dr O'Connor said the problem was not limited to the Indian community.

"It also happens in other South Asian communities, and even the Chinese community, but the form might vary," she said.

"In the Pakistani community we used to believe it never happened, but I had a patient who was involved in an arranged marriage to a man based in Australia, and her husband demanded furniture, bedding and clothes.

"Her family was confused because she wouldn't be able to use them when she moved to Melbourne, but they were for his family in Pakistan.

"He threatened to cancel the marriage if the didn't agree to it."

Dowries were banned in India in 1961, and Dr Manjula wants to see similar legislation changes in Victoria and in other states.

"There are two ways of attacking it - to make dowry a criminal activity and bring it under domestic violence legislation, which would mean women would be able to put that forward in the court of law," she said.

"At the moment they are not able to make a demand on it because the Australian law doesn't recognise the word dowry.

"We want the specific word in the legislation so that men and women understand it's not acceptable in Australia.

"The bigger way of preventing is through visa conditions, and I have asked (federal Minister for Social Services) Kevin Andrews about making changes so that any giving, asking or taking of dowry would be a breach of visa conditions, so if it was discovered it would put the visa at risk."

A spokesperson for the Minister said he had no comment to make on the issue.

Standing up against family violence

Mr Baillieu said more people in the community needed to stand up against dowries, and agreed it was not just a problem within Victoria's Indian community.

"What we're fundamentally talking about is family violence, and family violence has many causes and we have to do whatever we can to stamp it out," he said.

Anybody who commits family violence is committing a crime, and we need to get that to be part of our cultural understanding.

Ted Baillieu, former Victorian premier

"Anybody who commits family violence is committing a crime, and we need to get that to be part of our cultural understanding."

Dr O'Connor stressed abuse was not the norm in every arranged marriage.

"I'm not saying it's happening in every case, about one in three families. Most of the families involved in these situations give the women due respect, but when it does go bad, it goes bad," she said.

"Many girls in south Asia want to get married because of the glamour. The men live in Australia and have the job and the lifestyle, and because the dowry has been in India for thousands of years it's something the government can't outlaw."

She said each culture had its own particular ways in which gender equality occurs.

"The dowry is just one way abuse against women within the community happens. But it can lead to inequality, disrespect and can make the woman seem less valuable in some way," she added.